‘Your persistence is becoming a little irritating, Mr Saintclair. Don’t, as you say, push your luck.’
‘The telephone number Micky gave me is for someone in Hamburg. It would be helpful to have some background on the city and the … political situation there.’
‘By political situation I assume you mean how great is the current influence of the SS?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘I will call you back in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, get as far away from the gallery as possible.’
Jamie was sitting in a coffee shop when the call came.
‘You are alone?’
‘Of course.’ But why would you ask that? he thought. ‘Do you have anything for me?’
‘After the war and the Nuremberg trials it was opportune for the SS leadership to lay low, but by the early nineteen fifties, and with Germany in political turmoil, the leadership began to flex their muscles again. In nineteen fifty-three, senior members of HIAG – Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit – a self-help organization set up by SS veterans, met in a Hamburg restaurant called the Ferry House. They were there to be courted by a local politician called Rolf Schmidt. Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘There was a Rolf Schmidt who became Chancellor of Germany.’
‘Precisely. Herr Schmidt was looking for votes and the SS were still a powerful enough force that he felt that they could guarantee them. Not long after that, Konrad Adenauer, who was then Chancellor, met with former SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer – you may know him better as Panzer Meyer – a man found guilty at Nuremberg of being responsible for the shooting of twenty-three Canadian prisoners of war. Meyer was a senior official of HIAG and had huge influence over its membership and was one of those responsible for having SS pensions restored to parity with those of the Wehrmacht.’
‘So the SS is still a power in Hamburg?’
He heard the shrug in David’s voice. ‘Times change. Men get old and they forget. HIAG was still a power in the sixties and seventies, the veterans formed social clubs and held parades, but in the eighties the tide turned against them. A new generation of Germans looked back and saw the SS for what they were: not heroes, but murderers who had prolonged a murderous regime. Officially, the organization disbanded in nineteen ninety-two.’
‘Officially?’
‘In reality, they went underground. The social clubs changed their names. The rallies were held in secret locations by those who remained. Despise them if you will, but do not underestimate them. They are old. They are not the men they were. But they are still dangerous.’
‘What about the number?’
‘A gentlemen’s drinking club in the heart of one of the city’s less salubrious areas. I leave it to you to guess what kind of gentlemen. I truly wish you luck, Mr Saintclair.’
‘Venice, huh?’
Jamie pulled his coat tighter round him and brushed off another ageless hooker offering the delights of a threesome at a local hotel for 100 euros, all in, as it were. Balls of sleet slanted through the street lights and turned the roadway between the nightclubs offering nude table dancing and the gaudily lit sex shops into a neon rainbow. Shivering prostitutes lined the route and men with greedy eyes and sharp-suited minders looked out from alleyways like conger eels waiting for their prey to come close enough. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg’s best known red-light area, but the city has plenty of other streets where you can get anything for any price. Steindamm was one of them.
‘Maybe you should have stayed in the hotel.’
‘What, and missed all this fun?’
She was grinning at him and he grinned back.
‘Hey you, pretty lady looks like Sigourney Weaver. You wanna get high? Teddy got just what you want.’
The speaker was a slim young man in a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt with a knowing smile and a handful of powder-filled sachets on open display. Danny Fisher didn’t even break stride. ‘Fuck off, or I’ll break your fucking arm.’ His boy spread his arms and shrugged. His smile didn’t falter and he walked on, looking for his next potential customer.
‘Where are we supposed to meet this guy?’
‘There’s a bar called the Pussy Katt. We stand outside and someone will be there to give us directions.’
‘Are you kidding? I thought we had directions?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘This is the way he wants to play it.’
They walked on up the street, scanning the garish signs for the Pussy Katt. Without warning, Jamie found himself confronted by a heavily made-up girl with straight dark hair who flashed her long fur coat open to show she had very little on beneath it. ‘You like what you see? You and the lady. Two hours, three hundred dollars. Or I can bring a friend, boy, girl, your choice.’
Danny Fisher snarled a warning and Jamie raised his hands in what he considered a non-threatening gesture of dismissal, but the girl stepped between them and rubbed herself up against him, her teeth nibbling his ear. ‘Athena sent me.’ He froze as he heard the name. ‘They are following you, be careful. I will try to stall them.’ She stepped back and he realized the make-up disguised the shadow of a face he had last seen by the side of the River Spree. And something else, too, that he hadn’t been aware of. A resemblance to the woman who could be her mother.
Before he could respond, she laughed in his face. ‘Fuck off, man,’ she said incredulously. ‘For that price you wouldn’t get to screw one of the dogs down by the docks.’
Danny Fisher had been about to step between them, but she hesitated and the girl walked quickly away. Jamie took her by the arm and pulled her into the nearest doorway for what, to all appearances, was a passionate clinch.
‘What the fuck is going on, Saintclair? That girl—’
‘She’s one of the Sisterhood,’ Jamie whispered. ‘I think it was one of the girls from the Reichstag. There was something familiar about her. I think she may even be Athena’s daughter. Don’t look round, but Frederick’s here somewhere.’
He felt her freeze.
‘What do we do now?’
‘We have to lose them and find the Pussy Katt fast. She said she’d try to stall them.’ They heard a commotion twenty yards further back. Loud male and female voices arguing in German, before the female’s rose to an outraged shriek. ‘And it looks like she’s succeeding. Come on.’
The sign above the Pussy Katt was a life-size cartoon of Catwoman complete with whip, breasts of enormous proportions and long legs in thigh-length boots.
Jamie looked around desperately for their contact. ‘Classy joint,’ Fisher muttered. ‘If we stand here long enough I could make a few bucks. Aw, shit.’
The source of her irritation was the boy with the broad smile and the drugs. He walked up to them, but when he spoke he wasn’t selling and his voice didn’t match the smile. ‘You were told to come alone, just the two of you. What’s with the company?’
Jamie closed his eyes. For Christ’s sake, how many people were following them? It was like the Lord Mayor’s parade. ‘If we have any company, it’s not because they were invited.’
The dark eyes searched the street around them. ‘You people … Okay, this is how it happens, yes?’
‘We’re listening.’
‘You go up to the bar and there’s two doors to the left. You take the first. You walk straight through and down the corridor until you get to another door that leads onto an alley. Go down the alley, turn left at the bottom, then first right. Left at the bottom and then first right. Don’t stop for anything. You got that, English?’
‘I’ve got that.’
‘What then?’ Danny Fisher demanded.
‘Someone will pick you up.’
‘This is bullshit.’
Teddy sneered. ‘You wanna walk away, be my guest.’
‘Come on.’ Jamie made the decision for them. They walked into the bar where a few single, middle-aged men watched a bored-looking naked girl dancing round a pole on a dais. No one moved as they entered and only the girl’s eyes
flicked in their direction, meeting Danny Fisher’s with a look of sisterly resignation. Jamie took the first door, which led to a urine-scented corridor and then out onto a poorly lit alley. The occasional over-bright window opened up contrasting scenes of family life or drug-induced squalor and the smell of cooking food fought with the nauseous odour of a long-blocked drain. Above them, the overhanging trees cast eerie shadows, and every shadow contained a threat. They hurried over the rough cobbles, avoiding the anonymous patches of darkness.
When they reached an intersection in the labyrinth, Danny stopped. ‘Left here,’ she said. ‘Have I asked you this before, Saintclair: how the fuck did I get into this?’
He tried to think of something reassuring to say and failed. ‘It could be worse.’
A bitter little laugh gave him his answer. After another fifty yards a narrow passage, barely wide enough to take two people, opened up to their right.
‘This can’t be it,’ Fisher groaned.
‘The man said first right.’
‘I’m not—’ As Jamie made for the entrance a long scream of pure agony echoed through the narrow streets.
‘Where did it come from?’
‘Somewhere up ahead.’
‘Let’s go, Danny. We haven’t time for this. He said not to stop for anything.’
But she took his arm and when he saw the look in her eyes, he knew there was no walking away.
‘I’m a cop, Jamie. This is what cops do.’
They broke into a run until, in the distance, they could see two figures struggling against a wall. Jamie cursed, certain that they were interrupting two people having sex. Then he saw the arm draw back and punch again and again into the other body. ‘Hey!’ At the shout, the attacker made one last savage lunge and ran off up the alley, disappearing round the nearest corner.
By the time they reached the scene, the victim of the assault lay writhing in the shadow, each breath a desperate razor-edged sob. Danny knelt over the twisted figure and instantly recoiled with her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
Slowly, Jamie’s eyes adjusted to the deeper gloom. She had dark hair and might once have been beautiful, but it was difficult to tell, because her face had been horribly carved open by a dozen knife strokes. The thick fur coat still covered her body, but the spreading pool of darkness on the cobbles told a story of other unseen wounds. It was the girl from the street. Athena’s daughter. Wide, liquid eyes mirrored the horror of what had been done to her. She tried to speak but even as they watched she gave a shudder and a fountain of blood spilled from her torn mouth. Desperately, Danny knelt beside her and spoke into her ear. ‘Your sisters and The Lady will meet you on the other side.’ Did she imagine it, or did the dark eyes lose their fear before they faded into sightlessness?
Jamie bowed his head over the dead girl, but he became instantly alert at the sound of running feet from the direction the attacker had disappeared. He stood in front of Danny, but she moved to his side.
‘You go high, I’ll go low,’ she muttered.
A silhouetted figure careered into sight and when it registered the two shadows ahead, a hand swooped to its waist and Jamie saw the bright flash of a blade.
‘High,’ Fisher reminded him. But Jamie had already recognized the distinctive T-shirt.
‘Did you do this?’ he demanded as the young drug dealer walked into sight.
Teddy looked wild-eyed at the murdered Sister of Isis and shook his head wordlessly. ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘this way.’
Danny hesitated, but Jamie pulled her away from the body. ‘There’s nothing we can do for her now.’
Teddy led them back to the narrow passage and into a maze of alleyways that twisted and turned so much that within minutes Jamie had no idea what direction they were moving in. As they ran, Danny’s hand groped for his and he squeezed it, trying to give her the reassurance she was seeking.
‘Why did you say that to her?’ Even as he asked it, he knew the question should have been more nuanced. What he really wanted to know was how she had known what to say.
‘A hunch.’ She shrugged, but her voice said it was something much more powerful. ‘It just seemed right.’
As they ran, he kept darting glances over his shoulder. It seemed unlikely anyone would be able to follow them in this warren, but he was out of his depth and he knew it. Even Danny Fisher had more idea what they were doing than he did. Somehow, the Sisterhood had found a way to follow them, ready to give what help they could in the search for the Crown. But even they had no answer to the sinister force that had stalked them in their turn, a force so ruthless it had cut down their representative without a second thought and with a savagery that was clearly intended to send a message. The girl had said ‘They’ were following, and he had automatically assumed it must be Frederick and the Vril. But how had Frederick found them? It could just as easily have been whoever had hunted down and butchered the men who had been sent from America to kill him. The ruthlessness was all too evident, but there was a pattern to his killings that just didn’t fit here. And there was a third possibility: what if the Sisters of Isis had enemies of their own? A secret society would always inspire fear of the secrets they kept, and a society that had survived for two thousand years would have no shortage of secrets. He had so many questions and no answers and he had a feeling things weren’t going to improve any time soon.
It seemed the alleys could get no narrower when Teddy turned into a gap between two buildings that would only allow them through in single file. At the rear of the larger of the buildings, a metal stair climbed to an anonymous doorway on the first floor.
Their guide’s eyes shone in the darkness.
‘We are here.’
XXVII
BENEATH THE FIRST light of the sickle moon.
Paul Dornberger frowned and checked his calculations, though he knew the answer well enough. The old man’s time was running out.
He tried to remember the first occasion his father had mentioned the children, but his mind was blank. Had it been in the cellar? He could never truly know that, because the visions of what had happened there were never complete. They arrived like star-shells over a battlefield; a burst of light, a moment of stark illumination, a fleeting shadow, then back into the darkness. But they always left that lingering doubt. Had he truly seen what he thought he had seen? Done what he feared he had done? It struck him that there was some memory that even a mind saturated with so much blood had to repress for fear of the consequences it would bring. He felt a surge of an unfamiliar emotion that brought with it a shudder. The realization came as a shock. It was there, somewhere inside this kaleidoscope that was his head, but Paul Dornberger didn’t dare to access it. Beyond a hidden door in his tortured mind was the secret that made him who he was. But he was too frightened to look for it.
Oleg Samsonov appeared in the doorway.
‘Are you all right, Paul?’
Dornberger forced a smile. ‘Of course, sir. By the way, I have these papers for you to sign.’
‘Fine, but come upstairs.’ Samsonov gave an embarrassed grin. ‘I’ve left my reading glasses in the big lounge.’ Dornberger smiled back. His employer was notoriously shy of admitting any deficiency. It was a measure of his growing trust that he revealed even this minor physical fault. Paul followed the other man up the spiral staircase to a room that took up two-thirds of the second floor of the building. Above this were the family bedrooms and dressing rooms and the state-of-the-art gym, and above that a helicopter pad hidden behind blast-proof walls. The space, it was more than a room, was enormous, a vast floor of the finest Finnish ash hardwood, scattered with oriental carpets from Isfahan and Tabriz, each of which would have paid Paul Dornberger’s annual salary twice over. In one corner hung the largest and most expensive flat-screen television that money could buy. In another, a Swedish sound system that had cost as much as one of Oleg’s Ferraris. The space had been designed somehow to produce separate acoustic zones, so that Oleg could be listening to
music at the same time as Dmitri watched cartoons and his film-star wife Irina was entertaining her friends by the enormous picture window that looked over the park. Marble busts from Rome and Greece jostled with modern sculptures on strategically placed pedestals. And in the centre, its exterior hung with fine art worth millions, the panic room.
‘You’re putting in a lot of extra hours lately on these merger deals.’
‘Maybe you should give him some time off?’ Irina Samsonov kissed Paul on both cheeks, while Dmitri pawed at his hand with a shy smile. Oleg picked up his son and hugged him.
‘I don’t think Paul has any of those treats he doesn’t believe I know about. Maybe later, Dimi. Ah,’ he sighed, ‘here they are. If there is one thing I detest it is getting older, but even money cannot buy you youth.’
Irina kissed her husband on the lips in a show of genuine affection. There was nothing artificial about Oleg Samsonov’s wife, neither the love she showed her family nor the beauty that seemed to light up any room she entered. ‘No, but it could buy you laser surgery, if you weren’t so frightened.’
Oleg shook his head ruefully. ‘No man, certainly no Russian, goes into hospital unless he needs to.’
He signed the documents, reading each one with care before putting his pen to it.
‘You should let Paul see your new acquisition,’ Irina suggested. ‘After all, he’s almost one of the family. He bought it while you were in New York. How did that go, Paul?’
Dornberger smiled. He had a momentary vision of terrified faces and the particular salt-sweet scent of burning flesh. ‘I think we’ll see the fruits of it before too long.’
Oleg glanced at the panic-room door and frowned. ‘No, we have things to talk about. Perhaps another time.’ Paul nodded and bit back his disappointment. If Irina was excited about whatever was in the panic room, it must be something special.
They walked back downstairs and Oleg went to his office, leaving Paul to deal with the papers. Dornberger’s mind drifted back to his earlier inner conflict. The Crown and the knife. The ever-presents in his life. It was still difficult to believe that what he had learned in the past few months was true. Yet how else could his father be explained? How else could he be explained. His father’s creation. Always the outsider. Never loved. Never treated as a child should be. His life had revolved around the Crown and the knife and Hartmann. A small bleep from his computer alerted him to a message in his super-encrypted e-mail basket. He opened it and read. It was a complex message with a number of attached documents and it took time before he understood its true meaning. The contents took his breath away. One step. Just one more step and he had him.
The Isis Covenant Page 19
